


The Jackpot Question

by lesbianchrispine (Sher_locked_up)



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Intimate Knowledge of the Ocean's Films, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and I mean Intimate, epic scene breaks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 12:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17080358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sher_locked_up/pseuds/lesbianchrispine
Summary: Ah, but in case I stand one little chance, here comes the jackpot question in advance...





	The Jackpot Question

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nevergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevergone/gifts).



**Monday, December 31, 2018**

The thing is, Harvey isn’t actually trying to be a dick about it.

He knows his own track record, thank you very much, but he really, honestly isn’t interested in making Mike feel any worse than he already looks, sunken-eyed and chapped-lipped, misery rolling off of him in palpable waves, slumped against the door jamb of Harvey’s penthouse at close to eleven o’clock on New Year’s Eve when he’s supposed to be on a plane (for the third time) headed back across the country.

It’s not like he’s _surprised_ , or anything—far be it from Harvey to even register the feeling, especially after all of this—but he’s not going to act like _I told you so_ personified.

Instead he holds the door as wide open as he can, flattens his body back against it, and ushers Mike inside with a warm palm pressed to his back. He isn’t sure what kind of words he’s supposed to use in this situation so instead of trying any he pulls a couple beers from his fridge and holds one out over where Mike’s sprawled on the sofa. Their eyes meet for a single, serious moment and then it’s Mike who breaks the silence.

“Thanks, man.”

Harvey bites down on the inside of his cheek. “You okay?”

Mike laughs, a choked-down, bitten-off sound that wrenches something awful in Harvey’s gut. “Yeah, terrific. Peachy. Perfect, in fact.”

“Oh, sure; anything you say three times must be true.” Harvey finally sits, perches right there on the coffee table facing Mike, elbows on knees. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, actually. It’s New Year’s Eve. What are _you_ doing home alone, and in _that_?” Mike gestures, and Harvey looks down at his faded green henley and soft flannel pajamas.

“New Year’s Eve is for amateurs; _please_.”

“Ah, I should have known.” Mike grins, and to Harvey’s relief there’s a hint of actual good humor in it. “The Great Harvey Specter would never be seen at amateur hour.”

“You got it. So the real question is: what are _you_ doing _here_?” Harvey says, and Mike opens his mouth but Harvey’s too quick for him. “Never mind your clothes; on that I’ve given up trying to guess.”

Mike scoffs, and then his face falls all the way down again, like some secret marionette strings holding up his eyelids and the sides of his mouth were cut all at once; and then, after a heavy, tense silence:

“I—I wasn’t sure where else to go.”

A weird conflated swell of pride and anguish bubble up inside Harvey’s chest, and he clears his throat and ruffles Mike’s hair and hopes like hell it doesn’t show all over his face. “Here is always an option, kid.”

Harvey holds his breath until Mike finally nods and smiles again, watery and grateful.

 

**Friday, November 16, 2018**

Donna’s comfortably seated on the sofa when Harvey strolls into his office a few minutes past nine, and she’s already giving him a Look.

“What now?”

“Why must you assume I’m here to scold you?”

“Because you’re always here to scold me?”

“Fair point.” She stands, smoothes the front of her dress. “I am in fact here to let you know your schedule has been cleared for the next full week. Between Alex and Katrina, you’re covered through Thanksgiving.”

Harvey busies himself with a file on his desk and low-level seethes. “Not to sound ungrateful, but whom the actual fuck asked you to do that?”

“That’d be me.”

Against every possible odd, a bet even Harvey would never take, it’s Mike Ross standing in the doorway to Harvey’s office with his hands in his pockets and a shit-eating grin across his face.

It’s funny, Harvey thinks, how you could let yourself forget the exact color of someone’s eyes; even truly remarkable ones.

“Donna, can’t you do something about how lax this building’s security has become?” he says, to keep himself from saying something stupid.

“On it,” she replies, and squeezes Mike’s arm and kisses his cheek on her way as she exits.

The desire to be as cool as possible at all times is crumbling with each step Mike takes closer to him and eventually Harvey thinks, fuck it, and pulls the kid into the kind of hug that probably definitely does not look remotely cool at all. They’re still sort of weirdly holding each other while they make small talk until Harvey registers the fact that he’s just stroked the lapel of Mike’s suit, the warmth of Mike’s broad hand still settled against his hip. Mike seems unfazed.

Harvey backs away an appropriate distance. “So, on your own in the big city for a few days? What’s the plan? Where are you staying?”

“Just reestablishing a few contacts, looking into a possible east coast presence for the firm... nothing I can’t fit in between annoying the crap out of you and letting you buy me dinner.”

“Don’t they pay you, on the west coast?”

“Sure, they pay me plenty, but I know how much _you_ make, and I also know you secretly get off on picking up the check.” Mike grins. “It’s your most endearing douchebag habit.”

“You’re all charm, kid,” Harvey says, but it comes out more hopelessly fond than sarcastic. “Glad to see the hippies haven’t changed you.”

“Never,” he says solemnly. “Now, I gotta check into my hotel and change, but you good if I come back in a few hours so you can accompany me on an epic tour of all the street meat I’ve been missing?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Mike, just stay at my place,” Harvey says absently, and when his mind catches up to his mouth it’s enough to make him pause and backtrack inside his own head. Did he really just offer to share his _living space_ with _another human_? A human he’s _not_ currently fucking?

The look on Mike’s face plainly says he doesn’t quite believe it either, so of course Harvey can’t possibly take no for an answer now.

“What? Donna has spare keys; she’ll loan them to you. Take your time, make yourself at home, use whatever you need. Eat, whatever. Sleep. I’ll finish up here and meet you there later.” Mike’s got dubious written all over the confused creases of his forehead so Harvey sighs and fixes him with his very best _I’m still the boss of you and you’ll do exactly as I say_ glare. “Go.”

Mike salutes, turns, and ambles off, probably to find Donna, the spare keys, and a modicum of reassurance that Harvey Specter did, in fact and in all earnest, just offer up his own home. And not necessarily in that order.

 

**Monday, December 31, 2018**

They drain three beers apiece, silently, after Harvey puts the New Year’s Eve countdown on his TV at a low volume, for lack of anything better, and for the small comfort of ambient noise. He waits till just before midnight to grab each of them a fourth and ask,

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Mike’s sigh is heavy, world-weary; it just about breaks Harvey’s heart. “I don’t know that there’s much to say. I mean, I’m guessing by now you know: I’m not going back.”

“Do you _want_ to go back?”

“What? No,” Mike says, brow furrowed, “it’s not like that.”

Harvey lets that hang; waits.

“It’s just—it’s like, being out there, just us, no Donna or Louis or you, it was just. It was too quiet, all the time,” Mike begins, haltingly, feeling around for the ends of his sentences like invisible footholds, “Or maybe it was too loud? Too little, or too much of _something_ , all the time. Instead of having _you_ inside my head all day, it was just noise. Or the absence of noise? I couldn’t focus.”

The thing is, Harvey really wants to get through this without being completely selfish. Can it really be considered _his_ fault if Mike makes that impossible with the way he looks at Harvey, with the things he says? “I thought, maybe, Rachel—”

“Not forever, no. Temporary solution to a permanent problem. She said she didn’t want to be you, and that it wasn’t fair that I was asking her to.”

“Yikes.” Harvey presses a hand to his mouth, then his eyelids. “I don’t even—yikes.”

“And she was right, it wasn’t fair. None of this is fair. Since the very beginning, you were always there, telling me what to do and what not to do, who I could or couldn’t see or talk to or look at, just, like, taking control of all the shit I couldn’t handle so I could—so I could just be the person you needed me to be. That _I_ needed to be. It was like I didn’t have to worry about the mess in my head because it wasn’t there anymore. My mind was finally clear and uncluttered like it’s never been, not ever in my whole life. But then you stopped. You stopped telling me what to do and where to go and you let me just leave, over and over. I didn’t know that I’d let myself get used to it. To you. I haven’t been able to—I don’t know what to do, Harvey. Everything is—messy. Fuzzy. Tangled.”

If Harvey’s heart weren’t already cracked apart and bleeding out all over the floor, that would’ve done it. He shakes his head, exhales; tries to explain, “I wanted you to have whatever you wanted. I didn’t think I could keep you here, or even if I could, that you’d resent me for it. I thought you knew what you needed, and it wasn’t me, anymore. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to—I had to let you leave.”

Mike nods out a shaky breath. “Then will you let me come back?”

“If I’m being honest, kid, that’s all I’ve wanted to do since the minute you left.”

 

**Tuesday, November 20, 2018**

“The whole reason Rusty even gets mad over Tess here is because he didn’t think of it first,” Mike’s saying around a mouthful of potato chips and beer.

“What, the job?” It’s the night before Mike goes back and they’d had every intention of going out on the town and raising hell like the old days, but somehow it’s nearly midnight and they’re still in sweatpants and socks on Harvey’s sofa. They’re watching _Ocean’s 11_ , the remake with Clooney and Pitt, and Mike has spent nearly all of it defending his theory about Danny and Rusty and the kinds of things they got up to in all those nice hotel rooms.

“No, of course not the job, about her being able to get under Danny’s skin like that,” Mike raises his bottle with a triumphant look on his face as he points to the TV. “He’s mad Tess made Danny work for it, after he didn’t.”

Harvey frowns. “He gave him a hard time. That poker game.”

“That was foreplay,” Mike grins, and Harvey raises his eyebrows.

“I didn’t realize you were so taken with the idea,” he says.

“Who wouldn’t be? It’s hot.” Mike shrugs. “They’re both so good-looking, and competent, and basically always about thirty seconds away from mutually assured destruction; it’s more unrealistic to think they _didn’t_ fuck.”

“Huh.” Harvey’s imagination is a cruel mistress. “So that’s the kind of thing that gets you going? No wonder you followed me around like a puppy all those years.”

“Sure,” Mike replies easily, like he’s not throwing hot coals all over Harvey’s heart just to say it, “I mean, you’re definitely as hot as Clooney.”

Harvey scoffs. “No one’s as hot as Clooney.”

“You are.”

 _Stop this!_ Harvey’s screaming inside his head, _end this immediately_ ; instead, he closes his eyes and lets the warm contented stupor of food and alcohol and Mike Ross curled up on his couch with his feet in Harvey’s lap run all over and through him, and then he hums to himself, noncommittal.

“‘Thank you, Mike,’” he continues, mocking, “‘I too have weighed your appearance and overall demeanor against that of an incredibly classically handsome and charismatic movie star, and have not found you wanting.’”

“Wanting what?” Harvey opens his eyes.

The way Mike’s looking at him almost betrays something before he rolls his eyes and digs a mean heel into Harvey’s thigh. Harvey sucks in a breath and grabs hold of Mike’s ankle.

“You’re prettier than Brad Pitt,” he relents; he’d meant to do something dastardly with Mike’s foot, but ends up massaging it instead.

“Honestly, I don’t know why I bother,” Mike says, but he groans and wriggles the other foot and goes all bonelessly content when Harvey digs his thumbs into his instep, so he can’t really be all that put out. “Anyway, that’s why he brings it to Linus. Because he knows Linus is begging for it.”

“ _Begging_ for it?”

“Are you sure you’ve seen these movies?” Mike swings his legs around and stands up. “Beer?”

Harvey nods and tries not to rearrange his lap. “I guess I’m just not as depraved as you are about watching them.”

Mike laughs from inside the fridge. “Lucky for you I can get you up to speed. Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask: would it be all right if I stayed with you a little longer?”

Mike’s tone shifts from flirty-casual to a deliberate casual that Harvey’s sure Mike must know he can hear; that Mike is using, in all probability, as a silent plea for him not to question.

“Of course it is. You know that. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks.” The fridge door shuts and Mike flops back down next to him on the sofa, closer than before, like maybe this time he’s gonna put his head in Harvey’s lap. He hands over a beer, and they clink their bottles together before each taking a swig. “There’s more for me to do here, it turns out, and traveling during Thanksgiving week sucks. Rachel’s mom is out there with her already anyway.”

Harvey nods but otherwise doesn’t comment. He’s never been very good at keeping his thoughts to himself when his mouth is open, so he refills it with beer, closes it, and swallows.

 

**Tuesday, January 1, 2019**

It’s edging past two o’clock in the morning but Harvey wouldn’t dare move from the sofa even if he could, not with Mike Ross pressed all along his side and drooling rather spectacularly onto his shoulder, the creases in his forehead finally smooth, eyelids finally calm.

Mike had passed out shortly after one; he’d made a big, goofy show of throwing an arm around Harvey’s shoulders, pressing a beer-soaked kiss to the side of Harvey’s face and yelling “Happy New Year!” as if the whole night had just been one big party. He’d leaned on Harvey then, unselfconsciously and with his whole body, and Harvey hadn’t had the heart to pretend not to like it. And then Mike had fallen asleep.

Harvey does his best to shift only enough to get his own legs up onto the coffee table without disturbing Mike. He’s pretty sure he’ll have a hell of a morning trying to realign his back and shoulders into some semblance of an upright human being, but he can’t care much about that now. Mike snuffles a little in his sleep, like a dozing Labrador, and he smells woodsy and soapy and familiar, and he’s warmer than any blanket Harvey’s ever owned. They’d long since turned off the TV in favor of bluesy old holiday music, the kind that doesn’t drive you absolutely crazy, and Ella Fitzgerald’s voice floats lazily out of the record player, all over and around Harvey, envelopes him like a warm bath: _Maybe I’m crazy to suppose… I’d ever be the one you chose…_

He might as well let himself enjoy this, he figures, even if it’s just for a little while; for as long as Mike needs it, anyway.

 

**Saturday, 12/22, 2018**

“Mike?” For someone who’s supposed to be 35,000 feet in the air somewhere over Chicago, whatever’s happening around Mike sure sounds a lot like it’s happening down on the ground in New York, in the midst of more people than can reasonably fit inside of a commercial jet.

“Hey,” Mike says, voice harried, “listen, is there any chance I could crash at your place while you’re up in Boston for Christmas? Robert got bumped off his flight, so I’m giving him my ticket and heading back before New Year’s.”

Harvey frowns. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Mike, exactly; it’s just that Robert Zane isn’t really the type of guy to fly economy. Or even _public_ , for that matter. Still, Harvey can’t claim to be any kind of expert when it comes to holidays, or families, or giving a shit about extenuating circumstances. “Sure, though it may change your mind to find out I’ll be crashing there, too.”

“What? No Specter family gathering this Yuletide? I thought things were good with your mom and Marcus and… you know. All that?”

“They are,” Harvey replies grimly, “and I prefer to keep it that way.” Mike laughs.

“Well all right, old man, then I guess it’s just you and me and a sprig of mistletoe.”

Harvey shuts his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose.

“In your absolute dreams,” he says.

 

**Tuesday, January 1, 2019**

As predicted, Harvey wakes up feeling more or less like a stale pretzel.

The drool stain is still there, but Mike’s not; he’s over in the kitchen looking miraculously clear-eyed and alert, foraging for god knows what.

“Morning,” he calls over, after Harvey lets out a groan almost as loud as the unhealthy crackling noise his shoulders make when he rolls them. “I found not-quite-expired eggs, some cheese that probably won’t kill us, and bread. Anything green in the crisper?”

“Is Mike Ross really lecturing me on the value of a healthy breakfast right now,” Harvey wonders aloud, wincing at the particularly noisy pop of twisting his lower back,“the very same Mike Ross for whom stuffed-crust pizza was until very recently major food group?”

“Pizza has tomatoes, and basil. And sometimes I get onions and peppers.” All of this comes from somewhere below Harvey’s sightline and inside of his fridge, so whatever Mike’s looking for, he’s taken it upon himself to find. “Ha! Spinach. This and those grape tomatoes over there... what’s that called? Eggs a la Florence?”

“Florentine,” Harvey corrects automatically, “but scratch the tomatoes and add a mornay; are you okay? Did you hit your head on your way to the kitchen or something? Is this the tail end of a nervous breakdown I somehow mercifully slept through?”

“Nope,” Mike swings around and starts organizing ingredients on the countertop next to the cutting board, knife, mixing bowl, and omelette pan he’s already managed to procure, “just realized it’s actually, literally the first day of an entirely brand-new year, and I’m surprisingly feeling kind of ready for it.”

“Oh yeah?” Harvey makes his way over to one of the stools positioned on the opposite side of the kitchen island. “Sounds promising.”

“Mhm,” Mike says, chopping up ribbons of spinach, slivers of tomato, little cubes of cheese. He looks up and there’s a youthful sort of joy radiating from his face that Harvey can’t remember seeing in years—not since before jail, or maybe even before Rachel and Grammy and all of it. It’s all blinding blue eyes and curved pink mouth, and dimples: it’s a good look on him.

Harvey changes his mind, slides off the stool and moves around to stand next to Mike so he can start cracking eggs into the mixing bowl. He bumps Mike’s shoulder gently, deliberately. “Well then, Mike Ross, what would you like to do with your very first day of this brand-new year?”

That’s really when it happens, Harvey will eventually decide, looking back on it; when whatever it is that’s always existed between them stops being ephemeral and elusive and muddled and dangerous to the touch. If Harvey’s honest with himself, he’s always found more than a few reasons to invade Mike’s personal space, to get as close to Mike as possible when they interact, has previously lied to himself about what those reasons were; but now it’s Mike turning into _Harvey’s_ space, getting right up close with a lazy smile and hooded eyes, and if Harvey didn’t know better he’d swear Mike’s about to kiss him.

“Enjoy it,” Mike says; and then, he does.

 

**Tuesday, December 25, 2018**

“Wanna run that one by me one more time?” It’s Christmas Day and in the grand tradition of people in Manhattan who aren’t celebrating Christmas, they’ve spent the day eating out of Chinese takeout containers and marathoning the rest of the _Ocean’s_ movies. Perhaps less traditional is Mike’s running diatribe about the complexities of Danny and Rusty’s subtextually carnal intentions for Linus.

Mike rolls his eyes. “Honestly, it’s like you’re completely blind to anything sexual that doesn’t involve an obscene amount of cleavage and a tight skirt.  _Pay attention_. They spent basically all of the second movie hazing him so they could get to _this_.”

Onscreen, Linus is throwing a careless half-salute and saying, “I’ll see you when I see you,” to a visibly impressed Danny and Rusty.

“ _That_ is a casual, we-just-had-a-kickass-celebratory-threesome-but-it’s-no-big-deal kind of brush-off,” Mike continues, “ _that_ is what they were training him for. He was already good at all the other stuff. He just needed to meet them on their level, confidence-wise, or else all the wonderful, kinky sex would never have worked out.”

Harvey shakes his head, but he can’t keep the fond grin off his face. They’ve more or less destroyed the half bottle of Bulleit bourbon Mike had pulled from Harvey’s bar cart, plus a couple of beers each, and everything feels warm and silly and teetering a little bit on the edge of unreality. “I bet you see some very depraved things in cloud formations and Rorschach tests, too.”

“I’m not responsible for what consenting adult clouds get up to in broad daylight; that’s entirely their business.” Mike takes a deep pull from his pony neck bottle. “But you have to admit, there is something kinda universal about wanting your super-hot boss to fuck your brains out. That’s just human nature; don’t pretend you never thought about letting Jessica tie you up and bend you over her desk and—”

“Another beer?” Harvey interjects, a little louder than he intended, and Mike smirks.

“Sure, fuck it. It’s Christmas,” he says, and when Harvey returns from his sojourn to the fridge, “I hope you know you’re not fooling anyone, though.”

Harvey offers up his best scoff. “Please, she’s like my sister. My very attractive older sister. Who happens to be extremely hot and also not related to me by blood.”

Mike waggles his eyebrows and they fall into a fit of drunken giggles Harvey would be embarrassed about if he weren’t, well, drunk, and full of spicy food, and so goddamned  _happy_ , really just much too pleased to have Mike here and all to himself, regardless of how objectively pathetic it all is. “Shut up,” he says, “like you should talk.”

He’d meant about Jessica, of course, but after a beat or two of Mike’s face going all funny and thoughtful Harvey realizes what he’s just said.

“No—sorry, not about—I didn’t mean—”

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Mike says easily, slinging a lazy arm across the back of the sofa and leaning a little closer to Harvey, “I know you must have been able to tell. I’m not that great at hiding stuff like that. I mean, I’m not that great at doing anything about it either, other than making an ass of myself, but my one saving grace is at least I’m kinda obvious.”

All manner of alarm bells are going off inside Harvey’s head, but there’s also an awful lot of bourbon and beer sloshing around in there to drown them out, and against his better judgement he asks, “So you… you thought about that?”

Mike throws him a gimlet eye. “Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m not! No, seriously,” he adds, when Mike’s expression darkens further, “if I wanted to be a dick I absolutely would, but for now I’m seriously asking you.”

“Harvey…” There’s a secret little smile Mike shares with the floor as he rubs the back of his neck and says, “I’m sure I thought about it just about as often as anyone else who’s ever worked for you, and also, you know, has eyes.”

Harvey should put a firm stop to all of this, he knows he should, somewhere back in the sensible recesses of his mind that aren’t swimming in the hazy burnt amber glow of booze and low lighting and his golden boy’s golden face turned up towards his, looking at him like maybe this whole time, Harvey was the one who couldn’t keep up.

The movie ends, the credits roll; the menu screen starts playing an annoying loop of the same four bars of music. Harvey finds himself up on his feet without quite knowing how he got there.

“Yeah, well. As far as wide-eyed ingenues go, you weren’t half bad yourself,” he says, hopes the tone of his voice can convey whatever his words can’t: helplessness; fondness; finality. “I’m beat, and I gotta get up early. Some of us still have to make an honest living around here.”

“The mental gymnastics it must have taken for you to say something like that,” Mike marvels. He kicks back with his feet up on the sofa and queues up _Ocean’s 8_. “Suit yourself, but you’re missing the best one. The whole Rusty-and-Danny thing? That, but Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett.”

It would be so much easier, Harvey thinks, if he could remember what it was like to be able to say no to Mike Ross. He’s pretty sure he used to do it all the time, and with ease. “All right,” he relents, and picks up Mike’s feet so he can slide under them before dropping them back in his lap, “but only because you’re _not_ prettier than Cate Blanchett.”

 

**January 1, 2019**

By the time Harvey’s brain can process the reality of his mouth being kissed by Mike’s mouth, it’s already over and done with.

Mike is still standing there, close but not as close, and there’s a furrow to his brow that wasn’t there a minute ago, like he’s trying to figure out where he went wrong in a tricky series of equations; and that just won’t do, even if Harvey can’t quite put it to words yet, so Harvey makes use of his hands and reels Mike back in by the hips and kisses him hard with every thread of longing that’s been fraying at his weary edges since the first time he laid eyes on the kid.

“Finally,” Mike gasps as they break apart.

“Finally? _Finally_?! Mike, what the absolute fuck is that supposed to mean?” There’s a heady, dangerous mixture of anger and arousal running all through Harvey’s veins and he doesn’t think he’s _yelling_ , per se, but he’s definitely not whispering sweet nothings. “I waited for you for… I watched you fall in love with someone else, _marry_ someone else… what did you expect me to do? What could I possibly have done, Mike? Ruin your life? Is that what you wanted?”

Mike’s eyes go wide and he looks around, frantic, like the right answer might be tucked in among all of Harvey’s stainless steel kitchenware. “No, no, of course not! Of course I didn’t—that wasn’t what I meant.”

Harvey folds his arms across his chest and waits.

“Ah, fuck—I knew I’d mess this up… that’s probably why I… yeah. I don’t know what I’m doing here, Harvey. I don’t know what I mean. I’m just—I’ve wanted you for so long, in such an abstract, unattainable way, it never occurred to me that you… that it might—”

“That I could want you back?”

“Well… yeah.”

Harvey’s pretty sure he can physically feel the clean, sharp break of his heart, the plummet and stab of its pieces down into his belly. _Oh, Mike_.

“You know what,” he sighs, lowers his arms, bows his head. “You know what? That is... fair. That is completely, entirely fair. I wasn’t—I was protecting myself more than anything. If anything had happened between us, before now…” he drags one hand over and down his face. “Mike, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, but I didn’t try to know. I was afraid to know. And now… I’m just so fucking sorry.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, and his hand on Harvey’s chest is a relief, a reminder to breathe, “I know. It’s okay, Harvey. I never meant it like that, like an accusation. I meant it like… like when you’re dreaming about swimming in an endless, clean, cold lake, and then you wake up and you’re so fucking thirsty, and it takes forever to feel your way through the dark to the kitchen, but that first gulp of water is just—”

“Heaven,” Harvey murmurs, and then he pulls Mike close, and then he kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.


End file.
